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Monday, May 16, 2016

‘Kere Sanjivini’ to be implemented in drought-hit districts

The project to clean and dredge tanks and wells taken up successfully in Bidar district will now be replicated across the State.

‘Kere Sanjivini’ scheme to clean and dredge tanks and wells, will be implemented in drought-hit districts.

Recently, the State government released Rs. 25 crore to be divided among 136 drought-hit taluks.

A government order suggests that the Panchayat Raj Engineering Department execute the scheme using machines like earth movers, to ensure that work is fast and completed before the monsoon.

“Taking up cleaning and dredging manually under MNREGA will be slow and the amount of silt removed will be less compared to that done by machines,” says the order.

The drought has pushed down the ground water aquifer in several areas and it needs to be replenished with rain water. To ensure this, silt in water bodies like tanks and wells needs to be removed. They need to be cleaned and protected.

The work should be started immediately and should be ideally completed before the onset of rains, so that they are ready to receive and store rain water in the next few months, according to the order.

“Senior officers have told us that Rs. 100 crore will be released for the project in phases,” Pavan Kumar Malpati, zilla panchayat Chief Executive Officer, said.

“Officials say that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was impressed with the work of dredging that he saw in Aurad taluk. He remarked that this was a good model and could be replicated,” Anurag Tewari, Deputy Commissioner, said.

“We achieved three things with this project: we cleaned the traditional water bodies so that they can impound maximum water in monsoon, we asked farmers to take away top soil for free and also found water in some tanks,” he said.

Three agencies, the Nirmiti Kendra, the zilla panchayat and the District Urban Development Cell, have cleaned 100 wells and 25 tanks. “At least 110 have got water,” said Balbhim Kamble, project director, DUDC. “Our target is to dredge all public wells and tanks and 400 temple Kalyanis across the district,” he said.

“The open well at Labour Colony in Bidar, for example, is yielding so much water that the whole colony is getting water from there,” says Vinay Malge, coordinator of Team Yuva, the NGO that is working with the government in this project.

Project to clean and dredge tanks and wells was first taken up in Bidar district